Chapter 1: What is the mental load and why does it feel overwhelming?
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You're listening to Life Kit from NPR. Hey, it's Marielle. So the knob on one of my kitchen cabinets fell off the other day. I was putting away the dishes. And I did try to screw it back on, but it wasn't working. I was going to need to take out the tools, and I did not have the energy for that. Also, I'm going to be honest, I didn't even take the screw out.
So here we are, days later, and every time I open the cabinet, I forget and I get poked in the hand by the pointy end of a screw. Why does it feel like there's so much we have to do just to stay alive and be reasonably comfortable? Also, these tasks, they always make themselves known to me at the least convenient times.
Like I go to wash my hands and wouldn't you know it, the soap dispenser is empty. These tasks fall under the category of the mental load, which is basically the weight of all the things you need to do or think you need to do to stay alive, maintain a household and take care of your loved ones.
The load feels heavy and it often feels emotional, like it's deeper than the soap or the screw or the carton of milk that you just noticed is almost empty.
We start to go, oh, I need to remember the milk because if I don't, my child will be hungry in the morning. If they're hungry in the morning, they'll show up at school and they won't have enough energy because they will not have had breakfast. And then if they don't have enough energy, they might not actually do as well in their test. Now, if your brain starts to do this kind of like,
from A to B to C to disaster, this is in part because this is emotional thinking work.
This is Leah Rappanner, a sociologist at the University of Melbourne who studies this concept of the mental load. She says one tip is just to start to notice these moments and specifically how weighty a certain task feels.
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Chapter 2: Why do women and mothers carry a heavier mental load?
But safety can go from the micro to the macro. Am I... you know, locking the doors at night to is it safe for me to walk on the streets?
And the last one, number eight, is Medicare. That's M-E-T-A, like abstract or conceptual or whoa, meta.
Am I creating... raising children who will thrive into the future? And am I creating worlds that I want to live in? Is the world the way I want it to be? So those are our eight.
So now that you have that full breakdown, take a little time to think about how things are handled in your home. Does everybody share the load in each category? Takeaway three, interrogate why you carry the mental load you carry or don't. For example, maybe you feel entitled to do a little less of the cooking because you bring home a little more of the bacon than your partner.
Maybe you know you're carrying a lot more around the house, but that feels just a little easier than trying to explain or offload all the planning, prepping, decision-making that goes into any one family activity. In one survey, Leah and her fellow researchers found that women in the U.S. were responsible for over 70 percent of the domestic mental load.
And she says there are whole categories of work that she's found men and fathers don't bother to carry at all because they know their partners already have those things covered. Assumptions like that one stem from some pervasive cultural myths that Leah says do everybody a disservice.
One of the biggest lies we sell each other is that women are better multitaskers than men, that their brains are just more efficient at keeping track of all these competing things they have to go on. And the research doesn't show that. Actually, what it shows is that none of us can multitask. What you're really good at doing is task switching, switching between.
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Chapter 3: How can we identify and categorize our mental load?
And when you task switch, you're actually burning through some of your cognitive capacity that it's actually draining some of your energy. Another myth we tell each other is that women are really good at household managers and men are just terrible at this. So men are really good at like running companies, right? That are complex with a bunch of different employees, competing demands, right?
you know, stressful moments, problem solving, but they're terrible at bringing any of those skills back at home. Like they just can't, like those are non-transferable skills. This is another thing. Men who are carers at home, who engage in the primary care of children and taking care of the They're more balanced. Kids come to them when they are hurt.
What a loss for all of us to not have the gift that is men's care, the gift that is men's love, the gift that's men's engagement. And then to say to women, you're just really good at that at home, but you're super distracted at work. What a loss for us in the workplace to not have the incredible talents that women bring.
Talents they develop in part through their ability to care, empathy, adaptability, time management, creative thinking.
When we get back from the break, Leah will teach you how to audit your mental load and hopefully get you on the path to less stress about book club politics and more guilt-free dreaming about that solo vacation. You're listening to Life Kit and it's time for Takeaway 4. Your time and energy are limited resources. Make a mental load budget to make sure you're not exceeding your daily capacity.
Here's Leah's quick breakdown for how to do that.
Start to see which, where is it going in these eight mental load categories? Like how much is going where and in what capacity? The next thing I ask you to do is start to think about whether these things are drains or
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Chapter 4: What are the three characteristics of the mental load?
Or whether they're credits, because sometimes we'll do things that we love and it can be a drain and a credit. Sometimes we can do some things that are like good and bad, right? Because the world is often not black and white. Then I start to ask you to start thinking about if you could dream, like if you could dream and go in any direction you want, your life was your own, what would you do?
And then I ask you to start thinking about how do you align your mental load spending in that way? How do you hold on to the things that you have to do? How do you hold on to the things that you want to do? How do you make sure that not every day, because I know that's unrealistic, but you're clear on where you're going and you're using your mental load energy to get there.
So refer back to those categories you've already been thinking about. Which are your favorite? Which are the absolute worst? If you're partnered or have a roommate or kids or all of the above, are there perhaps any simple trades to be made? Whole items to throw away?
Maybe you have a friend or coworker who has been really overdrawing your emotional support lately and it's time to kindly pull back. Maybe it's your partner's turn to handle every aspect of magic making for your kid's upcoming birthday. You both don't like it, but somebody's got to do it. Does it always have to be you?
As you're saying all of this, I'm hearing thousands of American mothers just from coast to coast listening to this and shouting back at us like, in unison, but if I don't do it, who will? If I don't do it, they're not going to do it. They don't know how to do it.
First, I want to validate that feeling. I want to say to you, and I'm also going to say to you, I'm sure you have that feeling not only because you're feeling it, but also because you have direct experience living it. Because I heard this from the mothers too, like, I can let myself down. I can let my partner down, but I can't let my children down, right?
Like if I drop this and I can't have them suffer as a result of this. You have to get clear on when you're doing these things that really are critical to your children and your family, critical to your goals and your dreams and your ambition. And when you're doing things because you've been socialized into doing them.
When you're doing things and you're holding the expectation up, but really actually if you dropped some of it down, it would be okay. You also have to get clear on what are your skills and your deficits at home, right? Because you're not going to be good at everything. And getting clear on what's your partner's and your children's skills and deficits and how do you bring them into that.
Takeaway five. Separate what tasks are necessary from what might just feel necessary. Once you've got that smaller pile, look a little harder. Are there any places where you're duplicating the mental load? Or where you might be able to lighten that burden with outside help?
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